


Next To You

by Hawkgay



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mild Gore, Sorry no funny tags today this fic made me want to scream, Whump, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 08:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19720198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkgay/pseuds/Hawkgay
Summary: After wandering in from a night out of the Academy Klaus hears someone crying in the bathroom. Investigating he finds Ben huddled in the bath and covered in the remains of a mission and decides to help his brother out.(Prompt: Klaus helping Ben clean himself up after a very bloody mission.)





	Next To You

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the prompt: Klaus helping Ben clean himself up after a very bloody mission, That I received off tumblr and I hope people like it because I accidently made it sad.

Near midnight Klaus stumbled through a window from the fire escape and fell in a heap onto the floor. Mind fogged over with a mixture of cheap vodka and nameless drugs he somehow picked himself off the ground and wandered towards his bedroom. Klaus’s feet dragged across the linoleum tiles and with every step he listed to one side until the tip of his boot caught on the floor and sent him flying into the nearby wall. His face planted against plaster with a bang loud enough for Klaus to hope to fucking hell it hadn’t woken anyone up, he didn’t need to get into any more trouble as it is. One-handed Klaus pushed himself away from the wall and used it for support. He kept his palm flat against it and relied on it to guide him back to his room.

Klaus sensed something off and for the life of him couldn’t remember why the house seemed so empty and still. He’d knocked against Diego’s room and out of all of them he slept the lightest, Number Two should’ve at least shouted and that unnerved Klaus. A thick fog had taken root inside his mind and made it impossible for Klaus to remember exactly why he’d left the house to get so intoxicated he could barely stand. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. His heart felt light and freed Klaus of the ghosts who usually pursued him.

Almost at his door, Klaus paused as he heard weeping drift into the hallway from somewhere close by. A familiar grief-stricken siren song which beckoned Klaus to follow it into the bathroom a few feet away. Propped against the wall, he listened intently to the mournful lullaby for several minutes, and a solitary tear rolled down his cheek as it went on and on. Unable to resist the melody any longer Klaus responded to the call and staggered towards the ajar door of the shared bathroom.

Through the gap, he peered inside and discovered the source of the crying. Knees tucked underneath his chin Ben sat in the bathtub with his back to the taps, his gaze firmly planted downwards. Beads of water slid down Ben’s naked skin and glistened in the blue tinted light like fish’s scales. Granting Ben the illusion of an ocean nymph stranded on the shore and longing for the sea. The sight took away Klaus’s breath at the sheer otherworldly beauty in front of him, he yearned to freeze the moment and live forever in it. Heart beating a steady tattoo against his ribcage and bewitched Klaus entirely on impulse pushed the door wider and snuck into the cramped bathroom.

Fully inside, Klaus closed the door behind him by leaning his back against the wood. It shut with a soft click, and he wished for the thousandth time their Father would trust them with a lock. Klaus wanted another layer of security to protect Ben’s small slice of tranquillity he’d built for himself. Lost within his mind the intrusion went unnoticed by Ben, his gaze firmly focused on the bottom of the bathtub. Near the door Klaus lingered, hesitant to bridge the short space to the porcelain dingy Ben had taken refuge in. He wanted to wipe away the tears falling down Ben’s cheeks but was unsure if he was welcome to do so.

The tiled floor stretched in front of Klaus as he took the first step forwards. Time seemed to slow as he used all his strength to traverse the distance from the door to Ben. As he got closer, Klaus saw in more and more detail the pitiful state his brother was in. Congealed blood plastered a clump of hair to the side of Ben’s head, and a smear of something almost black stained the back of his neck. Both missed by his frantic attempt to wash away the taint from whatever mission he’d gone on. Streams of rust tinged water and tears flowed from his hairline and gathered at the tip of his nose, a drop swelled and fell downwards.

Finally, at his destination, he towered over the pure white tub and noticed the puddle of slurry Ben sat in the centre of. Made of a mixture of slimy pieces of human flesh and massive waterlogged blood clots, it was thick enough to block the drain and leave a centimetre of standing water at the bottom. Klaus wrinkled his nose at the salty almost metallic smell of the gore yet stayed where he was. Immune to it from years of helping Ben clean himself after missions when he needed to release the Horror and stain his hands further with death and destruction.

Klaus sat on the cold edge of the bath and with two fingers lightly tapped his brother’s forearm to alert him of his presence, taken aback slightly by the freezing temperature of Ben’s skin. The weeping stopped immediately as Ben snapped his head up and looked wildly around before his vision focused on Klaus. The rims of his eyes were raw red from crying, bloodshot and filled with a darkness that unsettled Klaus. Covered in goosebumps Ben’s skin appeared grey and lifeless in the dull light, a response probably to the cool air inside the room. Enchanted by his inhuman beauty Klaus couldn’t figure out why Ben unnerved him, he put it down to his current state of both being high as a fucking kite and drunk off his ass.

Reluctant to speak aloud and break the spell of silence blanketing the room Klaus gestured for Ben to shuffle forwards. Ben understood and gripped the sides of the bath, he pulled himself to the other end and left huge streaks of blood in his wake. Klaus got back onto his feet and went to the space freed up by Ben, he twisted both taps and watched as the water changed colour as it hit the slurry coating the bottom and struggled to drain away. Klaus bent over and forced the crimson goop through the holes of the drain, indifferent to the leftovers of Ben’s killings coating his hands as he went about his task.

The last substantial evidence of Ben’s forced bloodshed vanished down the black hole of the drain and left behind only patches as a memorial of the pain he’d inflicted on the world. Klaus placed his hands under the stream of water and rinsed away the red staining his palms. He fiddled with the taps for a moment before he found the right temperature and placed the plug into the drain. Klaus stood back upright, and his eyes fell onto the curve of Ben’s spine. Below the skin, something pushed outwards and squirmed, the fathomless beast from another universe restless inside their shared body. The greatest burden rested on Ben’s shoulders by nature of his gift, and he endured it better than Klaus ever could his own. Ben was the strongest among them, and while Klaus could talk to the dead, his brother had become the embodiment of death, and it had taken its toll on his fragile psyche.

Faced with the melancholic stoop of Ben’s shoulders within touching distance, Klaus was forced to confront a truth he’d hidden from. He no longer understood Ben, not like he used to. At some point over the last few years, a vast sea had grown between them, and Klaus had no idea how to cross the ever widening space. The two of them had taken such divergent paths in dealing with their trauma. Ben wholly disconnected from the world and drowned himself in wave after wave of pain he never spoke aloud to atone for sins he’d committed by the directions of their Father. Klaus had thrown himself into the realm of the living, numbing himself with drugs to quiet the inescapable ghosts surrounding him and to hide from his own shame at abandoning Ben for those brief moments of respite.

The crux of the matter was they were two sides of the same coin, united in pain by the curse bestowed on them by some cruel unknown deity. Ben cared too much for the humanity he saved on a regular basis and who still rejected him as a person, the public saw him as a monster, and it destroyed him inside. His gift something to be feared and avoided. Klaus’s power, on the other hand, forced him to see the worst in people, he knew far too well the disturbing acts normal humans did to each other and wanted no part in helping. He hated how they treated Ben, and if he had the chance would burn the entire world just to bring his brother a moment of peace.

As the bath slowly filled Klaus left the bathtub to busy himself with searching the cabinet underneath the sink for the bubble bath, Allison hid in there. He found it stashed behind a bottle of half empty bleach and stood back up to grab the hand towel hanging on a metal loop fixed into the wall. He returned to the bath and added the thick syrupy liquid into the water, with one hand Klaus swirled the shimmery bubble bath around until it dissolved. The soothing smell of lavender floated out of the water and hid the sharp tang of blood, changing the sombre aura of the room into something relaxing.

Klaus settled on the lip of the tub facing Ben and dipped the towel into the water, damped it. He pulled it out to wipe the missed bits of grime off Ben’s face and stopped when a hand shot from the water, it wrapped itself around Klaus’s wrist and held tight enough to bruise. Slowly Ben’s eyes met his own and Klaus watched as the mist cleared within them, wordlessly his brother pleaded for him to come closer and anchor him back to reality.  
  
Ben rarely allowed people to touch him, the issues with his own self-image impacted every factor in his existence. He distrusted everyone in fear that if they came in contact with him, they would end up dead. Ben starved himself of affection out of duty to protect people and had become trapped as an observer of his own life. Forever on the sidelines, Ben wished to be apart of the world and knew he never could be. The knowledge fueled his conviction of being sub-human and drove him to hide away, yet the more he disengaged, the less human Ben thought he was. A feedback loop that fed off itself and Klaus had no way of stopping.

So to have Ben reach out to Klaus was a massive thing, the simple act showed he wanted the affection his brother gave out so easily. He desperately needed Klaus to remind him of his own humanity with the feel of someone else’s skin against his own. A request Klaus could never refuse.

Ben released his grip around Klaus’s wrist and shoved his hand below the water again. Hastily Klaus peeled off his crop top and pulled it over his head while at the same time he shimmied out of his trousers and underwear. He loosely balled up his clothes and threw them in the general direction of the laundry basket. Klaus stepped into the bath space in front of Ben as his brother slid backwards to give him extra room. He slowly submerged himself into the warm water until he sat knee to knee with Ben.

A tangle of arms and legs it took sever awkward moments for Ben and Klaus to manoeuvre themselves into a comfortable position. Chest to chest Ben curled around his brother’s torso and felt extremely cold against Klaus’s warm skin. Head against Klaus’s ribcage Ben seemed to hold onto his brother like a life raft. The contact a beacon of light which guided Ben back from wherever his mind had wandered off too. Dark hair tickled Klaus’s nose with the scent of blood and salt water, a mixture representing Ben perfectly and calmed his strained nerves.

The comforting weight on Klaus’s chest and the steady sound of running water created a wave of drowsiness to crash over him. For the first time in months, Klaus felt safe and loved, though distantly he knew something was wrong and he couldn’t pinpoint why. Klaus banished the thought to the back of his mind and instead rubbed soothing circles in Ben’s back. He savoured the soft feel of his brother’s skin under his fingertips and closed his eyes. Their contact wasn’t sexual in any capacity, it was just an act of loved filled intimacy neither of them received normally. A showing of devotion if their Father ever found out about would end with both of them punished harshly. Klaus dozed off, and as he did so, a sense of immeasurable loss bloomed deep inside his heart. An emotion he couldn’t find the source of it filled him with a nameless dread.

Within the darkness of almost consciousness, Klaus felt someone press their cold lips against his own, soft and unpractised it was one of the most kisses he’d ever received. Filled with overwhelming grief, Klaus chased it as it ended and opened his eyes.

The room empty Klaus was alone.

He sat bolt upright and caused a surge of sweet smelling water to crash over the lip of the tub and flood the floor. Every sign of Ben inside the bathroom had vanished. The reality hit Klaus like a stone as he remembered the truth. Ben had died months ago. The last few hours were merely a memory he recreated in guilt and fueled by drugs. He dropped his face into his hands as the dam in Klaus’s heart burst as he began to sob. His cries echoed in the darkened bathroom as he grieved for a love lost forever beneath the black waves of death.

**Author's Note:**

> I know there are a million mistakes but I need to just get this up and move on to other things. Thank you for reading <3


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